TOWER TERROR
While the state struggles to evolve a policy on mobile towers, residents take up cudgels and elbow the motivated to dismantle ‘the killing machine,’ writes Gajanan Khergamker
The battle lines are being drawn between a select few motivated managing committee members or landlords for the most obvious reasons and the masses vis-à-vis the issue of mobile towers.
In a shocking revelation made last year, the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) has admitted that of the 448 mobile towers operating out of Gurgaon, only one is licenced. This was revealed through an RTI filed by a local doctor in which the MCG admitted it received 448 applications from various mobile companies in the past two years but had granted license to only one tower which meant that, 447 towers were operating without licences. The corporation said that it had not checked the radiation level caused by these towers too.
In January 2010, South Mumbai’s Usha Kiran apartments, on Carmichael Road was in the news, after four of its residents died due to cancer allegedly caused by electromagnetic radiation (EMR) emitted from the cluster of cell towers located on the terrace of the opposite building, named Vijay Apartments. Following a long-drawn fight between the residents of buildings in the vicinity, the towers were removed.
After this, just recently, when Malabar Hill residents led by Juhi Chawla took up cudgels against telecom towers atop the state rest house at Sahyadri, the towers buckled under public pressure. Today, most companies yield to the demands of citizens and remove cell towers rather than face the consequences of negative publicity due to protracted legal fights.
Expressing shock, a draft report of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, maintained that the Department of Telecommunication has no monitoring mechanism to verify the authenticity of the self-certification of the operators, deprecating “such a mindless arrangement made by the DoT to check the radiation level.”
Till date, India had no mechanism to monitor the suspected harmful electromagnetic field radiation from mobile towers that dot the nation’s skyline. While the responsibility rested primarily on the DoT, it washed its hands off by issuing a circular in November 2009, asking the mobile companies to test and certify the radiation emitting from their Base Transceiver Stations.
The DoT’s censure is part of the PAC’s draft report on the 2G scam that was turned down by the Lok Sabha Speaker, and is now placed before the new PAC by its chairman Dr Murli Manohar Joshi.
Quite logically, the PAC rejected the regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s opinion that self-certification is an option until some method to regularly collect the EMF radiation signals is developed. The Department of Telecommunication has been asked to examine the feasibility of introducing a more effective and reliable mechanism.
It also recommended that an inter-ministerial group of DoT and ministries of health and environment be set up to make a joint study of the harmful radiation of EMF on human beings and the flora and fauna and thereafter devise a suitable monitoring mechanism to keep it within the permissible level as per the international norms.
Conceding that studies in several countries under the World Health Organisation prove that the emissions from the mobile phone towers and networks are causing harmful effects on humans and the World Health Organisation has also endorsed the guidelines published by the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection for limiting radiation exposure, the PAC noted that instead of implementing the guidelines, the DoT issued the circular in November 2009, directing the mobile phone service licensees to implement them.
Earlier, this year, in a response to a query made under the Right to Information (RTI) Act sought by a Thane-based Nenesh Dolas, only 23 of the 2,169 cellular towers in district were legal. Mobile tower companied contended that they weren’t illegal as they had been installed with permission from the Department of Telecommunication.
The local bodies have served notices to over 1,800 cellular companies and have recovered Rs 1.15 crore fine from them. Apparently, the government has lost Rs 5.69 crore, which is yet to be recovered. On the other hand, mobile tower companies contend that their towers are not illegal as they have been installed with permission from the Department of Telecommunication while the civic body argues that pending court verdict of the towers need mandatory civic approval.
However, cellular service providers need to obtain permission from the corporation, municipal councils, gram panchayats and district collector and also from the Resident's Welfare Associations (RWA) of the area where a tower is to be installed.
“It’s nothing short of a killing machine,” says activist Tarun Chandiramani about cell towers which wreak havoc to public health like no other installation. “Forget global warming, just try living near a mobile tower and you’ll see that there isn’t just a rise in temperature. You’ll feel more tired, irritable and start falling sick within days,” he adds.
Incidentaly, the telecom company pays installation charges of Rs one lakh to the local body, besides a monthly rent to the owner of the house atop which the tower is installed. In turn, the owner is charged property tax at commercial rates which is four times higher than the regular residential tax rates.
The government claims, both the companies and the house owners want to evade paying this money, so they do not keep the authorities in the loop.
The corporation/council also demands a certificate for structural safety to ascertain if the building can withstand the load of the tower. On an average, a single mobile tower is 14 metres tall and weighs 2-3 tonnes.
In August 2008, a study conducted by Cogent EMR Solutions revealed that the electromagnetic radiations emitted from phone towers in Mumbai are way beyond safety levels. It was learnt that the safe limit of radiations for human beings is up to 50 microwatts per square meter and the upper limit is 100 microwatts per square meter.
The study revealed that the highest readings are from South Bombay, Vidhan Sabha and Nariman Point while other areas like Cuffe Parade, Breach Candy Hospital, Lower Parel, Bandstand and Versova also recorded high readings.
The radiation readings in the residences in these areas were more than 1,000 microwatts per square centimeters.
Being exposed to such radiation, the exposure is said to lead to problems like loss of appetite, irritation, fatigue, difficulty in concentrating, headaches, problems in vision, infertility and deformity of foetus. Medical experts feel it is a ‘slow and invisible killer’.
So while technology invasion has happened at a rapid pace in India, stringent laws are still to be in place against the risks that they come with.
The issue has been catapulted into limelight courtesy actress Juhi Chawla and residents of four buildings in plush Malabar Hill in south Mumbai who first approached the government to regulate mobile communication towers after 14 towers were installed in the state guest house in their neighbourhood.
Calling themselves ‘Neighbours of Sahyadri Guest House’, the residents have put up hoardings outside their buildings around the guest house, requesting the state government to remove the cellphone towers amid concerns about electromagnetic radiation from the towers. The guest house hosts prominent state guests visiting the city.
After conducting an independent audit of the radiation levels, Chawla, first wrote to the chief minister and MP Milind Deora in 2010.
“We had heard of the harmful effects of radiation but wanted to be statistically sure. After conducting an audit through an independent agency in our house, which is just 40 metres away from the towers, we found out that the radiation level in the house was very high,” said Chawla.
The residents are demanding that the standard for radiation through mobile tower boosters should be at 1 milliwatt per square metre.
According to experts, the exposure limits to radio frequency fields prescribed by India is 9.2 watts per square metre, in contrast to much lower levels in other countries — 3 in Canada, 2 in Australia, 1.2 in Belgium, 0.1 in China, Italy, 0.095 in Switzerland and 0.02 in Russia.
The demand from Malabar Hill appears to echo a recommendation by a government expert panel that warned last month that regulation of mobile towers has not kept pace with the growth of the cellphone industry and India needs to revise its currently prescribed exposure limits.
According to the panel’s report, Salzburg city in Austria has a precautionary limit of 0.001, which is what the Malabar Hill residents are demanding. New South Wales in Australia has a much lower limit — 0.00001 — the report says.
